Reading guide
The teaching in one sentence
The four ways a decision goes wrong, stated as the four ways it can be sound.
Why the mirror exists
The Aṅguttara pairs discourses like this constantly, and it is not filler. Two things are accomplished.
First, the negative form gives the practitioner something to do. A list of four faults tells you what to avoid; the same list negated tells you what a good decision looks like from the inside — and those are different mental operations. A person checking themselves for favoritism is doing something other than a person aiming at impartiality.
Second, it makes the pair recitable. In an oral collection the negative and the positive form a matched unit, and the reciter who has one has the other. This is the same economy visible in AN 4.11 and 4.12, and in AN 4.3 and 4.4.
The waxing moon
AN 4.17’s waning moon and this discourse’s waxing one are one image split across two texts. The verse says that one who does not act against the teaching in these four ways has their fame swell, like the moon in the waxing fortnight.
The observation embedded in the image is worth stating. Reputation for fairness is not made by a single decision, any more than the moon fills in a night. It accumulates through a sequence of small, individually unremarkable decisions in which nothing improper happened. That is why it is slow to build and, in the waning version, slow but steady to lose.
It is also a notably modest promise. The discourse does not offer heaven, attainment, or the ending of suffering for making decisions well. It offers a reputation. For a collection frequently accused of promising too much, this is a discourse that promises exactly what the conduct in question actually produces.
Fame as a criterion
Yaso, the word rendered ‘fame’, covers reputation, standing, and renown — and the collection is elsewhere sharply suspicious of it. Gain, honor, and praise are named repeatedly as dangers.
There is no contradiction, but the distinction is worth drawing for students. What is dangerous is wanting fame and being changed by it. What this discourse describes is fame as an indicator: the visible consequence of a long run of sound decisions, reported from the outside. The verse tells you what happens, not what to aim at.
Using the negative form
Practically, this is the version to hand to someone who holds an office. Read as questions the four become a checklist that can be run before a decision rather than after it: Am I deciding this because of who they are to me? Because of a grudge? Have I actually understood the case? Am I avoiding a cost to myself?
AN 4.17 diagnoses; AN 4.18 prompts. That is the practical difference between a list of faults and its negation, and it is why the collection bothers to give both.
Key terms
The text
Four unprejudiced decisions
§1“Mendicants, there are these four ways of making unprejudiced decisions. What four? Making decisions unprejudiced by favoritism, hostility, stupidity, and cowardice. These are the four ways of making unprejudiced decisions.
The verse
§2If you don’t act against the teaching out of favoritism, hostility, cowardice, and stupidity, your fame swells, like the moon in the waxing fortnight.”
Self-check quiz
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